Dissenting votes came from councilmembers Al Frisby, David Neal and Bob Pape.

The meeting was marked by three hours of intense and occasionally heated comments from Merriam residents, many of whom had spoken during past council meetings against the outdoor aquatic design and the city’s overall process.

In a final statement before the vote on project design, city administrator Chris Engel told the council that the proposed community center is a “great facility” that will be good for “the whole community.” That design, he added, was built on a multi-year public process and conversation.

Final design of the community center included slight adjustments from previously released layouts, including an additional corridor in the lower level for easier access between the restrooms and the outdoor pool.

The city and design team have released a video showing 3D renderings of the facility as approved:

Suzanne Downey, left, a member of the Merriam Concerned Citizens group, gathers petitions Monday evening outside of Merriam City Hall to delay constructing the new community center.

“I feel like if you were to halt this project and listen to what your community is telling you that they don’t like, I think you could possibly make everybody happy. You could… let people choose what they want because they are telling you what they don’t want now,” said one speaker.

Councilmember Chris Evans Hands said it’s “really sad that we don’t all share the exact same vision, but that’s pretty impossible with the number of people we have.”

Dissenting councilmembers lobby for delay on vote

Some residents say the outdoor pool plan is smaller than Merriam citizens expected.

Councilmember Neal again raised many concerns before voting. He thinks the new outdoor pool will fail to be the “summer outdoor pool experience” to which Merriam residents are accustomed at the Merriam Aquatic Center.

“Pausing for a month to figure some of this stuff out seems to be the appropriate thing to do for our residents,” Neal said.

Councilmember Frisby cited his own concerns, including that he thinks the city has failed in certain processes. He believes in compromise, but city leaders did not make enough changes to the outdoor pool design to meet residents’ requests, he added.

Merriam residents made their final arguments Monday evening to city leaders to delay voting on project design of the new community center.

Councilmember Nancy Hupp said the city and residents have “an opportunity here to have so much more than we’ve had in the past.”

“We’re never going to get it perfect,” Hupp said. “There is not perfect; there’s making it the very best that we can to serve as many people as we can with the financial responsibility.”

Some members of the public accused Merriam leaders of doing a “bait and switch” on residents. Councilmember Pape said the city has not done enough to address resident concerns, but keeping the Merriam Aquatic Center and doing repairs instead of building new could also look like a “bait and switch” tactic.

Councilmember Scott Diebold said city leaders have been listening to residents for years on the project. The city also had no design to show before the vote because the city declined to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars designing a project the public could ultimately reject, he added.

The council on a 7-1 vote approved the TIF project plan, which allocates $6.6 million from the city’s I-35 TIF District to fund the parking structure on the new community center site. Councilmember Neal cast the single dissenting vote.

The council unanimously approved the preliminary development agreement and rezoning of the lot on Vavra Park from single-family residential to planned unit development, as well as the first bid package with McCarthy Building Companies Inc.